Lt. Amanda Lee is the first female Blue Angels flight demonstration jet pilot. Who is she?

The Blue Angels have always made local headlines when the flight demonstration team announces a new batch of officers, but the July 2022 announcement made national news after the squad announced its first female F/A-18E/F demonstration pilot — Lt. Amanda Lee.

The Blue Angels, formed in 1946, have had hundreds of women serve with the team in various capacities over the decades, but never as a demonstration jet pilot.

Here’s what fans should know about Lee before they watch her take to the skies in the No. 3 jet this week.

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Who is Amanda Lee?

Growing up in Minnesota, Lee worked for UPS while attending the University of Minnesota in Duluth. She enlisted in the Navy before graduating from Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois, in 2017.

Her successes as an aviation electronics technician led to her selection into the Seaman-to-Admiral Commissioning Program. She was designated a naval aviator in April 2016.

After earning her naval aviator wings, Lee was deployed to the USS Harry S. Truman in support of Dynamic Force Employment Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, as well as numerous exercises with NATO allies.

In 2019, Lee flew in the first ever all-female flyover that was part of the funeral service for retired Navy Capt. Rosemary Mariner, one of the first female Navy jet pilots and the first woman to command an operational naval aviation squadron.

Amanda joined the Blue Angels in September 2022. She has accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours and over 225 carrier-arrested landings. Her decorations include four Navy Achievement medals and various personal and unit awards.

Why wasn’t there a female Blue Angels flight demonstration jet pilot before Amanda Lee?

Before the team made the historic announcement, the physical demands of a Blue Angels pilot were frequently brought up whenever anyone asked why a woman hadn’t been picked to serve as a flight demonstration jet pilot over the years.

Unlike fighter pilots serving the military in traditional roles, the Blue Angels forego Anti-g suits, which inflate around a pilot’s legs to keep blood in the upper body and to prevent pilots from passing out in high-g moves. The team does this so that the inflatable bladders in the legs don’t interfere with their ability to control the flight stick. Flying with the Blue Angels also requires getting used to flying with a 40-pound spring attached to a flight stick.

But even before the July announcement, experts mostly dismissed these claims saying that female Navy aviators go through the same rigorous training as their male counterparts.

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Marine Maj. Katie Higgins Cook, the first female pilot to fly the Blue Angels’ C-130 Fat Albert cargo aircraft, told the News Journal in 2019 that there wasn’t any “giant conspiracy” keeping women from serving as flight demonstration jet pilots.

"Trust me, if I thought there was some giant conspiracy to keep women out of the jet demonstration, I would be the first person screaming it from the rooftops,” said Higgins Cook.

The pool of female pilots who qualified to apply for the Blue Angels demonstration is small and the number of pilots within the pool who were at the right point in their careers to be selected was even smaller, according to Higgins.

"The number of pilots with the qualifications and career timing and who are female is almost nonexistent and, in some years, is nonexistent," she said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Amanda Lee is first Blue Angels female jet pilot. Who is she?